Behind the Scenes at Golden Demon! JAMES TARO!

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this video is sponsored by Squarespace hello I'm Jeff hello I'm Patrick and we
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are joined by today by model maker plinth maker but as the table might
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suggest somebody who one one or two golden demons in this time James Taro He Man hello thanks for joining us right
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then James um obviously this is going to be a bit that's majorly of interest to a
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lot of people me as well I'm keep getting distracted look no look at that but before we get there I'd like to talk
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a little bit about as we do with most of our uh guests where did this all begin
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where did it start yeah take us right back well yeah um so yeah when I was about 8 years old um my brother just
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gotten his first Space Marine Paint set as you do back in the what this was late
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80s early 90s um and we went to our local GW store in Guilford and um there
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was this fantastic guy working there called Ben long hair big metal head great and brother was off to it and
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stuff and then he was like are you interested or I like maybe so he started talking to me about the law and talking
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about apothecaries and stuff and he was explained about how they like jab Into the Dead Space Marines and rip out
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hearts and from an 8-year-old's perspective I was like oh my God this is the best thing in the world oh you can
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see my mom in the background just like if he likes it it keeps me out of trouble it's fine I remember getting the apost model had no idea what to do with
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it I pretty much sat there and looked at it for a few years didn't do anything with it but I started reading white dwarf magazines and that was it that was
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kind of my first real thing and every time I went to news agents I'd see white dwarf yeah for a probably period of
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about 3 years or so I'd pick up white dwars and read them and you look all these beautiful painted Miniatures and
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start seeing stuff like golden demon appearing in there and you thinking this is quite cool like this a real thing
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that people do it's only a few years later when um it's getting much a woken opened I kind
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of in town my mom and went that's that store I've got that figure at home and I've looked at these magazines for years
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and I went in and that was it I was hooked utterly hooked like i' done a little bit like here and there like you
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know kind of imitating your older brother and stuff like painting figures but not really understanding many years between you about seven years between
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yeah yeah he he was a bit more into it at that point and we had like space Crusade um when I walked in I saw that
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back space say and um you know you see these things cropping up in shops and I
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remember putting together like Puzzles and all these great things when we were younger um and then that was it it would
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just the ball started rolling from there and it was like second edition 40K um
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you know going in every every weekend spending every spare penny I had got big into battle SE Gothic and necromunda and
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you know um morheim and everything and just just literally went full all out
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into the hobby every spam minute I had was painting um and then as the years went on obviously make friends within
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the store uh and there was a a guy working there guy Andy Brown lovely friend of mine still a friend now um and
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I was kind of at College at this point so it's quite a few years down the line I studying do graphic design but not
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really wanting to kind of sit in front of a computer want to do something physical with my hands um and then
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saying to him I don't really want to carry on doing graphic design what can I do and he oh do model making that's a
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thing like model making like is that really a thing you can do um and he explains he was at har University
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studying to be a model maker this is great and he mentioned about a friend of his will Hayes yeah I was like oh my God
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this is great and he was explaining about like you know how he started to do work against workshop and start to
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develop this other side and I was like this is just the best thing ever went off and found there was a couple of courses in the UK uh ended up getting a
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place at Bournemouth University uh went down to Bournemouth spent three fantastic years down there studying to
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be a model maker went and worked over in New York for a bit like I'm work experience I did work in film TV
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architecture uh but while I was there so bear in mind I'd had this huge collection of Games Workshop stuff I'd worked for Games Workshop store as well
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for a little bit you know as we all do at some point um and while I was there my lecture was like don't do Games
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Workshop that's like that's for kids you know don't do this I was like oh okay and being quite an influential kind of
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like young kid at the time you know I was in early 20s you kind of think well okay they they know better I'll do that
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so I kind of still did little bits and pieces on the side and I end up doing my disser on haptic sculpting and the way hand
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sculpting was moving over to computers I actually came up to head office and actually interviewed some of the
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sculptors at the time and put it all into my dissertation so the love was still there for it yeah um and ended up
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kind of selling a lot of my stuff off which still hurts me so much and uh kind
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of got rid of those bits and ended up going off into film and TV and first job I got was doing product design and I
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worked on action figure ranges and I went and work for like spart games for a bit doing sculpting um just kind of did everything
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I do you wanted um do you want to name some action figures uh so I worked on the Doctor Who range Doctor Who was huge
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that was the big one all of the action so yeah I went in at the dve attendant era we just
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finished the guy before him I can't remember his name now before David Tenant Chris Reon chrison yeah they just
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finished his run and David David Tenon came into it so I was there from that eventually the whole Billy Piper stuff
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and yeah for years of doing that we you hand sculpted molded cast of them so I know how to mold stuff which was great
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and I used to be the so I was the kind of Master painter um sitting there paint
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stuff we do the classic Doctor Who of like Tom Baker and yeah all the multicolored shirts and jackets and that
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it was great fun so using the kind of the skills I developed from painting for years um which completely forgot you
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know entering golden demons as well I come back to that um yeah and then just kept developing and growing the skills
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from been nice to see your stuff on a shelf in a shop it was lovely yeah like going in a shop you know we'd get like
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boxes of figures all the time as well and just getting to actually going into like Toys R Us which I've been into for
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years and being like I made that I made that that's really cool like do you find that because again like say we'll we'll
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Circle back to the fact that you've been able to paint from quite a young age did do you find that when you're painting
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for toys it must be having to rain yourself in because you going to go oh let oh you
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know seven layers on that face can't paint like that flat color you know the faces were a bit more they put a bit of
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Rouge on the cheek on cheeks and stuff but it was you had to paint for China
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for mass production so it's like how can we create a paint scheme that can be transferred into mass production and
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often you paint these figures and we' add a couple of extra colors a little bit in here and there little bit of a dry brush it come back and like that
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it's nothing like a bra that doesn't look anything like what I painted at all and it was a lot of back and forth in
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and obviously budget cuts and stuff like that um yeah and did that for years and eventually left and went off and did a
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bit of work on like Billa Queen the desert I was the chief airbrush artist doing all the drag makeup no wow did
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that for years uh that was really cool it's like every few months they like we need you know 200 more masks yeah great
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come in and sit there for a few weeks painting drag makeup got really good at that using their brush as well um so
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always developing new skills that Beau it CU I did lots of different stuff over the years it was constantly moving
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through different aspects of of the industry I kind didn't refine myself to anything um you know you kind of go
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through and you find what you don't like so like doing a bit of fil work in film and be like it's fun but I don't like it
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the bit of architecture work no it's fun but I don't like it but you pick up skills as you go along yeah um eventually like having kids and need to
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kind of get a proper job and all this and found a a company called um atam we
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did everything they were kind of like a everything you can imagine kind of place they did everything from like cigarettes
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alcohol out through to big window displays and right so I was basically in there just as a guy that could do things
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so just started doing everything and anything um and then ended up building like another side to that business and
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going off and starting another business with someone else and but on the side I started picking this up again so all
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that all that time of like picking up all these additional skills um it's weird I had a weird moment I remember I
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was traveling and I was kind of like what I really want to paint G's Workshop in the middle of nowhere and I was like I really want to I want to paint a
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figure again this would be great um and ended up getting back and just diving straight back into it again and
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it's kind of picking it up and remembering what I enjoyed about it when before
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University Brian uh remember when you said that if I built you a website with
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I built you one it was all right actually well I think you should tell me about some of its features well I
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often to more people and you grow the way you want as well I I I did that for
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your website Steph oh it's very kind of you anything else well I know um that you love the false Emperor no just
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Emperor i' um agree to disagree um yeah anyway so I put a shop in and uh you can
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make check out seamless for your customers with simple but powerful payment tools except credit cards PayPal
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pay it's pretty neat isn't it yes and then I put an on storing for you so you
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can sell like products or Services uh whether you sell physical Goods digital content or like the saving the world
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service thing that you do uh squares space has the tools you need to start selling online I say that sounds like a
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a reasonable uh reasonable little website you've made me there thank you I know it's it's anything for you Stephen
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it's all uh it's all nice and straightforward with fluid fluid engine the Next Generation website editor from
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Squarespace unbreakable creativity one might say say it influences if you ever wanted to to build one of these websites
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yourself um Stephen you you just go to squarespace.com for a free trial and
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when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com theep painting phase to save 10% off
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your first purchase of a website or domain oh that's wonderful oh um oh I can see I'm being called into work um I
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better Dash sorry I I'll wait for you it's funny isn't it because I think you
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you learn to have a love of models yeah from Games Workshop and then that
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inspired you to go on and do more things with models so you painting from a young age
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learning learning that that your interest and your desire to to work with Toy Soldiers as and then into models as
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we want it and then wake working it all the way around and then all of your skill sets from going on to all your
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different levels of employment I've brought you back to this brought me straight back to this yeah I mean one thing I was doing when we were doing um
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so we did the hmon forces action fig did those for years I was the guy that had
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to make all the little canteens and they were like oh can you make some shoes I'm like yeah great and you sit there just
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making these little things and you're like these are skills that I've picked up from trying to learn to sculpt and
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trying to do stuff you you know it's all transferable from when I was doing gam Workshop all those years ago I even
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remember when I was working in the local store and a parent came in oh this is rubbish kids shouldn't do this and what
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what kind of job can you do from this and I was like you've got the reading aspect you got the math aspect you've got the modeling the painting The Social
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aspects I was like so much that it covers and in my head I was always like I'm going to make a career out of this
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this is going to be fun I'm going to push this as far as I can and it was like just dived into every single aspect
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and have as you said come all the way back and even on the side while I was learning to do my hobby again I was also
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starting to build my own business on the side so I would stay late at work and get on the mill and machine stuff up and
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start developing my own products you know cuz in my head I I always wanted to have my own business you know so I can
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be my own boss and then I can paint my own figures which is yeah that's it you can make your own time then you can get
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to it and I always had that goal in the back of my head of thinking I'd love to be able to dictate what my days are so I
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can sit down and paint which is how I've managed to get to this point to being able to be like right it's 3:00 clock
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off I'm going to do some painting you know and that is it's taking a long time time to get to it but it's it's wored
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and definitely having all those years of it's weird I can see going going back now and my University lecture has been
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like oh you should stop with the Games Workshop at the time I was oh whatever you know that's what got me into this
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you my portfolio was full of painted toys and they're telling me to not do it but I can kind of see now when you look
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back you actually that was quite beneficial cuz that's taught me a lot of different skills yeah because you could
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have got you could have got into Games Workshop yeah as you was what you were planning and then just got yourself
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stuck into a bit of a rck really could just I could have just worked for the sculpting design team whatever and been
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a heavy metal painter and that was that would have been my my one Avenue yeah whereas yeah going off and trying
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different things and I think a lot of the skills I've picked up and the things I've learned have come through in things I'm now doing like the
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the skull we had to do um I didn't work on it personally but I helped with the
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the manager at the time helped with a giant flying egg for Virgin Atlantic it's weird things like that like we have
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giant eggs and they send you know the cows that everyone paints up and they put on yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the
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similar thing they gave us all these giant fiberglass eggs and they're like dude something cool with this um and
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Virgin Atlantic were're like we want to do like our flying lady with a cape an egg we're like okay so we did this whole
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egg balanced on one point of the cape yeah so you look at like how is that up
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there but it's all like a metal rod so that kind of knowledge has come through into like the servo skull that I did
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can ITA like kind remember these things
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could do that and that's yeah that's a very good point and I think that's something that that we've sort of talked
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about a little bit like flying bases in GW don't really exist that much anymore it's all about being precariously
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perched on a rock or and yeah this is my tactical rocks my hatred because I I I'm
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stuck in this point where I'm not the biggest fan of the Flames of of the Jets as a way of having them in the air I
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don't like them on the two toes hanging on a piece of scenery when you know a ton weight Man suit you go I can never
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go is he landing on that or taking off from it you know and then the plastic transparent ones I don't particularly
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like either but they're the one I go to cuz like they're the one that narratively makes more sense and there's
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a few that they've really nailed like um there's that sister of Battle Sister suent I can't remember I think yeah with
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all the and that's a really great way of doing it to do it that Nails it completely yeah
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my um my friend has just bought from uh I can't remember the name of the company something um something forg that they
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called that they do a lot of games where they do a lot of Imperial Guard stuff and he's just bought to play in his army
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as a um a lightning he's got a death core of C adjacent uh by Clan and it's
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done going over a slightly collapsed Church spire which has got a fallen Bell on it and
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it's wh it's just just enough to make it look like it's in flight and that I'm all right with that because you go if
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you get the angle right yeah but you know like I've said before with um Dante you going is that man in the ton of gold
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armor landing on that precarious piece of thing or taking off from it and you go now did he end up you know so I'm not
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I yeah I could Whitt on for Witter on for ages about my dislike of things around flying stands but um yeah it's
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trying I think that's where um when people go into into to demon and stuff and they try and take a model and they
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try and elevate it to that next level and I do think I think we've spoken about this before about the difference between like gameing miniature
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competition miniature you're trying to elevate those Miniatures that next level and trying to get past those things what
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don't I like about that model how can I make that model better absolutely right yeah definitely like the years of
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Designing and working with things and learning different techniques is very transferable you know
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it's what I say to a lot of people trying to learn lots of things as well got yeah find out different skills and learn off other people well I think you
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finds as well isn't it is I think that um d a touch on careers and and then is
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that how many people that you you I'm not suggesting it's only dominated by
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this but how many people you are successful in Golden Demon I've had a career that relates to it at some point
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in time like you know Rich gray is was a graphic designer yeah and you know and you and you go well you know graphic
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designer isn't the same as pting to painting Toy Soldiers go yeah but you learn and understanding of light hitting
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things and you know there is a an artistic element of understanding you know where to shade
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thehere and we not to when you look at people that are um really good in gaming as
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well it's generalizing I tend to find a lot of my friends that are very very good at gaming very academic like they
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they know numbers like you know they're accountants and analytical analytical yeah whereas I'm rubbish at gaming I
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have no idea how to game at all well I used to have a good friend of mine if you just in cas you able want to really
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make yourself feel bad about your whole attempt of playing War Games the guy I used to play against most in Liverpool
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is um a genius level IQ and a terrible by his own
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admission painter ofes and but then would lean into it
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that we be playing a game and i' be absolutely pasted and he would lean across the table look at me go do you
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know if you spent less time painting them more time reading the book go how you go I've never known I've
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been able to paint to an okay stand and could becomeing insults I always say to like friends of
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mine but when I go along in the game like right I'm here I'm here just to enjoy the spectacle I was like you see my nicely painted toys I I have no idea
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what we're doing but looks good yeah and I've painted loads of armies I've got so
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when I said at University I sold off loads of my stuff I only sold off my bits box which wow is still heartbreaking because there was old like
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epic stuff in there like all the old Titans all gone all sold to pay for University I kept every painted army I
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had so I've still got boxes of them I go through them so I've got tons of painted armies when I was a kid oh wow and it's
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lovely seeing that progression all the way through like you know even still having my first young Bloods winning
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peace yeah i' would never get rid of it I had someone asking me last night about whether I'd sell stuff I'm like nope
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never sell any of my painted stuff because that's this is my hobby yes whereas my career is I keep that
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separation of church and state yeah my career is making things and the store and I sell stuff on there take on the
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old commission for trophies and bits and pieces but this is my hobby I keep it very separate but also as well as when
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you say I hold on to this the armies and I hold on to the things I've painted for competition and things you just painted
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generally but they are also to some degree they they they are they're life snapshots aren't they yeah yeah 100% you
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know what I mean you know you know I asked you before how long that took you to make and straight away you told me
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how long it took to make and then immediately told me how long it took to paint you know that's a you know that's
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an element of time of your life and you you know and you you can come back to go well you know trying to figure out how
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to do this and how to do that it's like you know I think yeah if you especially you if you're paint into this stand of
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getting rid of something that you you ped your life into been a year isn't that pretty much yeah that's a year of
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work and I think as well from from having years of working in the industry we used to do work for selfes so if
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you've ever SE the window that's plays for sages you make all this stuff spend months making it you go work all weekend
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working nights days nights days nights days you install these big window displays they're in there for a month
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and all used to get thrown away they just been it all and you're that's one work it's all gone like some stuff now
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they're a lot better now for like recycling things and being a bit more um sustainable which is good now but the
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problem is that would hamper the creative side of things we used to do some crazy builds them i' I've built
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like whole fronts of boats and stuff to get in the window and you look at it and you're like how did they get that in the
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window you know giant swimming pandas and carousels and all this stuff like we had to do a whole shoe display where
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it's all mechanical moving the things and we were in there almost like every day of the week trying to fix these things and especially busy coming up to
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Christmas oh Christmas display so so one big one we did was um it's one really
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sticks where we did the Jubilee all right yeah she did the Queen's diamond golden we one of the jubilees and I had
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to make her Carriage her Ascot Carriage I made a fullsize replica of the Ascot carriage and we had to sculpt I sculpted
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three life-size corgis and then we made nearly a hundred of them and they all went in the store and they all got
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dressed up and it was stuff like I've still got three of them at my house now we had some rejects I I'm taking those
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those are going in my house yeah it ended up me buying a real life Corgi as well like all this kind of stuff like
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but you would make all this stuff and then you'd see it all get thrown away afterwards so for me like spending time
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on this could let it go because I spent so many years making something you spend
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weeks and months making it and you just hand over yeah and that gets taken away and you never see it again you know you
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get a photograph of it um but like a few people that have come around my house and see my studio are like God you're
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such a nerd look at you and I've just got boxes full of things and I've got
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catalogs of like every um pamphlet from every show I've been to all the tickets
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I keep posters I just because this is the thing I loved as a kid yeah 30 odd
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years of doing this now I really do hold on to it cuz every now and then I like to open up I remember that that was so
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cool I remember there being there when yob nilson won the sword for that and like that that to me is the thing I
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really hold on to and I love about it yeah just think little James would be really impressed with big James would
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you know what I I've said that a few times I would be proper proud of myself like it really would like seeing being
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like a kid and seeing names and painting miniatures in whitewolf magazine and
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seeing people like Mark lton so Mark CFT I remember his orc War Boss it was the same year I got my gold in young Bloods
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his orc War Boss is like on the same page I remember looking so cool and you chat him now he's like I hate it it's got a like an espresso coffee lid on it
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or something like what it looks great but now he's a friend of mine like to me that's quite a weird thing because I
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idolize these people as kid like I wasn't really in celebrities or anything that painters were like my thing like
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these people that you would you would go like games day I think the first one I went to was 97 98 and you see this guy
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holding a sword above his head and you're like what he won a sword for painting a that's the best thing ever
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like this is this is just you can't like as a you know as a 13 14y old kid that
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is just incredible like even now like you know you saw it as like depc yeah
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you've got it's a competition and you're competing against one another but they're also your friends yeah and you
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see these people win a sword and I was like streaming with tears for my stuff and I'm streaming with tears for theirs
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and it's just it's so much emotion energy because you know what it takes to get to this point and it all comes out
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and it's it's great well I know cuz I I am although by the Sunday because of doing so much talking for selling uh
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helping sell the arst Opus paint brushes I was had virtually no voice left but
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but I still Ross still said that when he was when he was stood in the hall and the golden demons were being announced
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he said I could still hear you louder than everybody else yes you know you won
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a few times again and then Neil won and you know I think the funny thing for me has been I think with gold demon
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painters is that I like a lot of people I consume them through through Warhammer
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Community yeah you know so there is that thing where I sometimes don't know who that person is in the flesh but I know
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them by miniature or know them and you know sometimes even their name hasn't I haven't remembered
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their name but I've remembered the thing they made you know and I had that embarrassing thing of almost being a
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little bit like um Oly being trying not to be condescending or patronizing but
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I'd only met Neil Hollis that morning it was on the Saturday I think it was and
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um I'd only met Neil that morning uh outside uh outside the convention center
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ad depcon and uh and he was really you know you you know Neil of all he's one
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of the most instantly friendly people isn't he you know hey up Shaga straight opening cut and he's just such
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a really nice guy and he obviously knew the channel so I was a bit of a disadvantage and uh Byron had said
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remember before it goes in the cabinet bring it bring it round so when he turned up with what ultimately won 40K
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single gold I um I didn't know who Neil Hollis was and
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I didn't know his backstory I'd known that that dark angel had done extremely well and all the rest of it and I was
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like he went this is what I've done and I was going that's really good well done you you know yeah I really hope it goes
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well for you and I was really you know not because you know because if I known him and You' been a friend make that's
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know a bit you know to knuckled out a bit but I'm a bit like looking at going that is stunning but I am sort of going
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best of luck and then I left and later on and then MOS just went good he said well yeah i' be interested to see
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whether he can go for go for like his third Slayer so I was like so what
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yeah so you know so sometimes these are a bit um it can be a bit faceless to to these but when you then get to to think
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about the time and the effort that put people put into it and you know it's not you just knock it out five weeks before
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you go you know I think the one thing that I think where I think I seen a golden demon piece that I actually thought that has to have been done very
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quickly was the guy that was which we actually did a bit of a show on it was um the the guy that was mimicking the um
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the um power wash simulator oh yes yeah cuz you think that DC he came out about
27:06
yes that that DLC already came out about six weeks before golden demon was was on so you thought that guy's had to work
27:13
like a demon to get that done you know thing is I remember from like so from years and years of looking at Golden
27:19
demon winners in yeah you white dwarf and now it's a bit easier because you you can see people online same thing I
27:25
tend to only know people by what they've painted the amount of people that come up and say hey it's so and so and I'm like you painted oh yes I know your
27:32
thing but like I always remember um from looking at white dwarfs I think it was
27:38
it's around 90 1999 98 there was uh the dogs of war shake that came out on the
27:45
back of a cart oh yes yes I remember that that came out like a couple of days
27:50
before a golden demon and Chris Blair got a hold of one and Chris Blair sculpted a flying carpet and he painted
27:57
it up apparently like overnight before golden demon entered it and once so like
28:03
stuff like that I'm like yeah okay yeah you can do these things over the course of months but sometimes that moment of
28:09
inspiration comes you're like I can nail that nail that quickly I've got to do it I was walking around uh watching people
28:14
you know that um the big oblong of tables for painters at adepticon I got
28:20
talking to a chap who I think might be Danish and I've I've mentioned this on on it'll come up on Ross the show that
28:25
we've got with Ross as well and um saying literally going oh where's the accent from and he's like oh I think CH
28:32
said he was Danish and he was like and he was painting this night Lord's contempt to dread North and I was like man that's really nice and he was just
28:38
like oh thank you very much and said nothing about it and then Saturday night I finally get to walk around the cabinet and it's in that guy's literally gone
28:46
with his golden demon piece out is still painting it you know it's great all the all the differences um between bits and
28:55
like how people have done stuff like the um the gold demon winner from last year like the jeel I think was it um like a
29:02
age of sigar like giant smash forget all the details Chris
29:08
Clayton's one yeah yeah yeah absolutely incredible piece of work and um he said oh it's been in the cabinet for for
29:14
quite a while cuz he painted it over covid and and then that wasn't necessarily like a a last minute
29:20
addition um yeah he tends to work on his projects for quite a long time yeah he has these ideas and he builds them up
29:26
over a long period of time and he doesn't Post online as well like we would say he just you don't know when he's going to enter and he just appears
29:32
and you're like damn itam it's Chris again oh oh well stealth
29:37
into Slayer swords so I I guess perhaps like move moving on to the golden demon sort of stuff there I have tons of
29:44
questions about like cuz foolishly I guess I think You' be like oh I want to
29:49
went to Golden demon like you think you know I really like this model I'm going to paint that but is there anything that
29:55
say you know you you entered how many pieces did you enter this year was it uh six this year yeah yeah okay two of two
30:02
of them were re-entries uh one of them was a rework which got me a gold in the end yes um but yeah there four brand new
30:09
pieces that I've painted over the course of the last six months so do you how much do you do you think about CU I
30:16
guess you would have started painting these before the new categories were announced yes I had them all built ready
30:22
to go and then you sit there and go how what do they go what what what was that experience like that that was fun yeah
30:29
so the um the grots I'd had that planned for about a year uh since Warhammer Fest pretty much yeah uh and I was like juel
30:37
straight away juel and then they announced joining of juel and diama yeah and you even though you're like okay I
30:42
can still put it in there you're kind of weighing up going is it enough to go up against diamas diamas are huge yeah you
30:49
know and there's a lot more to them but then in the same token is a diarama going to be painted as well as a jewel
30:55
so his two figures going to be painted better than 10 yeah so it's you're kind of way it up
31:01
going where there's the spectacle of the piece itself but then also it is a painting competition at the end of the day yeah and that's something I've I've
31:06
learned a lot over the years of okay I've got the technical skill I've got to learn to paint got to get better at
31:12
painting yeah and that's why I keep telling myself like when I've had near misses and you think God I should have
31:18
done better than that you know I've worked really hard be like no it wasn't painted as well I need to paint it better you know that's so when you when
31:26
you when you say you've got the technical skill I like would that
31:31
beot a sh bottle for example like that's not something that most people be able to do yeah um and i' learned that
31:38
through your career my career stuff like that and you know with the grots being able to put them all together and make
31:45
it seem weightless and get in the perspective and everything right and with the servo skill being able to
31:50
create all the details on that and build it yeah like the technical aspect of it's there sometimes my painting does
31:57
lack like any one um but you kind of weigh up is it going to be enough for
32:02
that is it going to be enough for this and at the end of the day it does come down to painting painting's got to be there so you think well new categories
32:08
that's fine I can still enter it yeah just got to try and paint it as good as I can really yeah you know yeah and that
32:15
grot piece looking at the pictures of that I was like that's so cool i' I've had a lot of really good feedback yeah
32:21
really CH with that one it's like a really really striking it's something I havn't really seen before um and like we
32:28
were talking about flying bases like a second ago and it's like well he's got a foot on the floor but you know the way it's and it's all blurry so it's like
32:35
well no that's the ground but it's like a mile away it's fine yeah um like like the narrative is there and I guess like
32:42
you you mentioned you know you want to it's a gaming piece but now it's a a
32:47
comp yeah like have you had have you thought about that with everything that
32:53
you've entered I guess pretty much yeah so when I first started with eldrad that
32:59
was just like I take a game in piece I can put it on a base but then this was yeah 25 26 years ago yeah so it was just
33:05
end to that model but then as you come into it now and you look at how people
33:11
create narratives with pieces and how they they elevat to the next level you know they you put it on a plinth and the
33:16
plinth is creating a Spoke piece it's like putting a frame on a picture yeah yeah you're
33:22
you're just taking it from a picture to something that is to be viewed and to be looked at and creating viewing angles um
33:30
to actually be able to look at the piece in a certain way that you want it to be looked at um yeah and it's just it's
33:36
just taking it that next step that next level I mean there's still gaming pieces that people enter I know Andy Wardle did
33:42
that entire ultrain Army that won multiple golden demons yeah it was a
33:48
gaming Army yeah you know and I know like robin as well uh he's done his nurgle you know the gaming pieces yeah
33:54
you know but for me I I like to do them as display pieces they sit on shelf's display pieces and come back to gaming
34:00
gaming pieces and I paint armies just you're like dry bush in there just get
34:05
them painted as quick as possible yeah yeah and I like the KY like I so many
34:12
questions about this like um like the the way you approach painting you know a
34:18
competition piece like the I have this interpretation that I've sort of gathered online and I don't know how
34:25
true it is or not so um is you know the higher end stuff you do you're like nobody seems to use washes you know that
34:32
seems to be like y you do anything anything can go in toolbox pretty much um I try and approach like I've had a
34:39
few comments about how everything I paint is quite different like I don't seem to have a style um and that I think
34:45
that stems from the career again like someone turns around and goes do this and you're like okay trying different
34:50
things and I I I still don't know in my head what really works in a way so I
34:55
just keep trying new things um but you pretty much use anything within your worldhouse in order to yeah get it to
35:02
that point and the main thing I've learned over the years is in order to succeed at a model it's got to be
35:07
something you want to paint for yeah three four five months potentially yeah you know and often I'll build like I've
35:14
got a whole list at home of potential ideas for Golden demon that I might not do any of them I might do some of them
35:21
like but you make this list it starts with just a list of ideas and like even driving over here I was getting ideas for other things I'm always of new ideas
35:28
and oh I could try that and do that so you write on a list and you go through and you do a short list and then you get the models and I've now got a a table at
35:35
home with all my sets laid out with PLS they might go on so I kind of pre-plan it and then I'll pick one up and I'll
35:41
spend two evenings building it yeah and I build it and I put it on the shelf and then I go and build another one I put on
35:47
the shelf and I've got a I end up a whole shelf of stuff that I've built half built like the servo skull like was
35:53
half built in a box for a while and then sat they eventually put something else on it and you slowly build them up like
35:58
the grots was the same um the squat robot that was that was like a last
36:03
minute moment of inspiration of just thinking you know what I've got this great figure I want to copy the artwork and you just built it in one or two
36:10
evenings yeah and it sits on there and then you sit there and you look at them and when you get that moment of inspiration where you think you know
36:15
what I really want to paint that figure for the next two or three four or five weeks yeah that's that's when you've got
36:21
a strike while the iron's hot and just get on it and paint it yeah that's and it is is just like you think ahead of
36:28
yourself and think how do I want to paint this how do I want to go about approaching this model maybe I want to try some new things and you've just got
36:35
to want to do it yeah you know and there's moments in on all of these where I've gone oh I don't I'm not enjoying it
36:42
like found it a lot with the troll like I kept picking it up and putting it down picking up putting down so you move on something C you paint something C for a
36:48
bit and then you come back to it yeah you but in the back of my head I'm always cuz I always like to have things finished I like to finish things just
36:54
finishing s even the troll I got a a winners pin for it St well happy with
37:00
that always happy even after all these years to get a pin but I know full well that I could have done better with that
37:05
but the fact it's finished yes great yeah it's done now that's it it can go in the cabinet I can look at it every
37:11
now and then I can work out what I can improve on in the future and was was that underworld's war band that one that one yeah yes and
37:18
so I have all these questions because because we were chatting a little bit on the previous one with with the war bands
37:25
and the squads um being on these Scenic bases you've obviously entered that into
37:31
the war band how close do you feel like that is to like diarama for example it
37:37
could quite easily be really it's the fact that they've got the category whereby you can put an underworlds War
37:44
band in and the underworlds War band is you know five six figures whatever from those War bands makes it easier to Chuck
37:49
in there um I've got a piece that I'm starting to work on now and I've been arguing with friends about whether it's
37:54
going to be a diarama or a squad yeah in my head it could be a squad but then it depends what you put on the base you
38:00
know if you put something house on the base that creates a narrative is that then okay yeah a Dar but then the same
38:06
thing I've done with the the Titan there where I've got the little guys on the base yes that's I was perusing your
38:12
Instagram and you painting them under a m like under a microscope ey lenses was that right you paintting the ey lens you
38:18
painted the ey lenses on them yeah yeah cuz you you've got to put every little detail in and I was even resculpting
38:24
bits of them cuz there's like weird flash lines on them carving The Flash lines away yeah just to get a bit more
38:30
of a a defined silhouette on the figure yeah and so so this piece that one you gold didn't it yeah um and you said that
38:37
was a rework it got a commended entry in the demon Warhammer Fest um and yeah
38:44
Matt KY won that year with his orc bomber yeah and when I saw that orc
38:49
bomber I sat and looked at it and checked him about it and you kind of re look at it and you realize you know he's ex heavy metal still heavy metal um and
38:57
you realize different things he does and you're like oh God how do you do that like that yeah and that's it you know 25
39:03
years in I'm still going huh yeah that's incredible like so so because the the
39:08
reworks was something I became a bit more aware of with um with Neil's Dark
39:14
Angel like the diarama and then he changed the base and got slay sword yeah
39:19
um with the with the reworking of a model um how like I guess like like how
39:26
much has changed from the previous entry like what what
39:31
do you feel like you how how did you elevate it to to get really it's refinement it all comes down to refining
39:37
it um adding the cuz obviously when it when I first entered it the legio imperialis hadn't been released yeah so
39:44
now it's been released I had a box of it sat on the side and was like I could chuck a few of those onto the base cuz
39:50
that sets the scale quite yeah it really does brings it all together and it also fills some of that empty void that was
39:56
actually on the base itself um but the main thing I worked reworked was the metal work on that so I got some
40:02
feedback from people and you know often you go to these shows and people always complain about not being able to get feedback from judges anymore but you go
40:09
and speak to other painters who you know are better than you quite clearly um and you're like how can I improve this what
40:15
can I do so you kind of go away with that oh okay so that's how they would have approached it so that didn't win
40:22
anything it got commended which is great but it didn't win any any trophies I'm like right let's rather than starting a
40:28
new model let's take what I've learned and actually rework it because you've been given feedback on that piece yes
40:35
why not work on that piece you you you rather than taking that going oh that's great I could have done better on that
40:40
piece I'll go and do it on something else no no make that bit better and see if it works then yeah um and if it does
40:46
work you're like okay I'm on to S here I'm learning yes yeah no that's yeah there a cuz I think
40:54
um again like my interpretation of things i' seen is like we look on o oh
40:59
he's he's just re-entered that same piece or whatever but like you know that
41:05
was entered in the UK you changed loads of it flew to a different continent yeah
41:10
yeah then re-entered it um people um stunny people paint like I always said
41:16
this a few times online people paint wargame armies yeah they use the same war game Army multiple times yeah like
41:22
you know it's it's the same thing if if they won a um they won a tournament with
41:27
painted army and that's their army and then they go and take that same Army to another tourn no one with B an eyelid no
41:35
yeah you can't reenter it if you've already also you also have best painted armies of tournament don't you say you say that you can only have a win a win
41:41
best pained arm I know I know people that have won multiple times with the same Army at tournaments you're like oh
41:48
yeah yeah that's terrible we need hunt them down yeah yeah I mean often I'll take like you know I'm going to a couple
41:54
more shows this year I'm going to Fen um in July so I'll probably take some of
41:59
these pieces along and you kind of get someone else's opinion then cuz you get cuz that's what pain competitions are it's someone's opinion on your models
42:05
yeah you know so I get to take it along and be like right what do you guys think of these models and they like ah they're rubbish like yeah cool why do you think
42:11
they're rubbish how can I do better how different is a like golden
42:17
demon to a non GW painting composition
42:23
so I think a lot of people feel the same as me that golden demon feels like the Pinnacle yeah of what we have in the
42:30
hobby yeah for me I've been following it since the '90s yeah you know it's the thing I've always strive for love
42:36
looking has a lot of Heritage it's a lot of Heritage you know and it's uh people don't a lot of people don't like the system but it's one two three that's it
42:44
those are your top three yeah and people like oh but you you know professional painters can enter like yeah and so what
42:51
I want to be up against the best of the best yeah I want to into a painting competition whereby I'm going up against
42:56
you Richard Gray your Andy wles your Nicholas's all these people you Albert
43:02
i' love you know love going up in a category against Albert who's won multiple Slayer swords who is one of the best painters out there and yeah Maxim
43:08
and all the all these names that people like these are professional painters half of them aren't professional painters they have day jobs and they do
43:14
this for fun some of them are professional painters but they're the best painters out there yeah so I want to be competing against the best the
43:21
best you know it's like going to the Olympics yeah other paint competitions although the notoriety
43:28
quite isn't there a lot of times the painters who are holding and running
43:33
these competitions are actually some of the best painters out there as well yeah you know Martin and Fett who run um Fen
43:40
they're fantastic painters in themselves so they've got their own opinions and Views about things but it's different formats so that's an open format so you
43:47
enter a body of work oh okay and they look at it as a body of work and they pick out a couple pieces they might have
43:52
like you know best tank best boat whatever and pick out those but in general it's a body of work um I think
43:59
they're doing the same thing with npl although they might have different categories as well um but there's
44:04
there's room for different things but it's for me it's different opinions and different views on how your your models
44:11
stand up against everyone else's yeah how close have you got with how
44:17
many have you done any Miniatures for Golden de that you've got quite close and then just gone I'm not feeling that
44:22
being this one well well not not entering or no I pretty will always
44:27
finish I'll always go through like and get to a point where like no this is done now I'm going to enter it and see
44:33
what happens um just purely because I like I like to finish things like you know I don't L people get I get that
44:39
little nagging kind of oh it's not done I need to finish that thing and often I'll be like another day and I'll just
44:46
get it done and just finish it because I want it cleared from that backlog so you can kind of clear it and go right that
44:51
one didn't work like but I'll enter and see how it goes because again it's all a game of testing um where you're at um
44:58
and you kind of learn learn things as well about what you can and can't do as a painter well going into that what you
45:04
can't do as a painter is the anything Dong from from any company but you know
45:10
obviously Games Workshop is one most people relate to is there any miniature you've looked at and thought I'd like to go answer
45:16
that but the miniature actually scares you a little bit with the troll actually weird stuff that skin like a lot of what
45:24
I found I've won with over the years has been more uh ered um Imperial Knights Titans squats can do the grot skin quite
45:32
well but like even the bike so it's hard surfaces mhm organic shapes
45:38
H I get a little bit like oh God how do I approach this and you know even when I
45:43
look at my collections like nekron armies Space Marine armies dark lots of armor you know armors are great my one
45:51
of them is I must be about the only I must be about the only death guard player on the planet that doesn't have mortarion yeah cuz
45:58
I go oh no yeah I mean most things I would love to have a go at um because I like to push myself and try new things
46:05
um I've got mountains of models that I would probably have never painted years ago but I'm like one day yeah paint that
46:12
that would be fun um it's just spending enough mental energy to kind of pre
46:18
pre-plan cuz I kind of pre-plan everything in my head anyway um lots of hours of just searching through the
46:24
internet and looking at pictures and reference and what other people have painted and how other people approached it and tutorial videos and you know even
46:31
all these these years into it I'm still constantly trying to learn things from other people um and yeah at some point
46:37
I'll approach things but it's I like to push myself out of that kind of safety net of I'm just going to paint the same
46:43
thing the same way every time and go no I try this I that looks cool I try that
46:49
just getting around to it yeah time isn't it how much do you remember how much do you remember of painting that
46:54
for young bloods oh I remember every single moment of it I've was it like putting yourself under the that level of
46:59
pressure at that age so what happened um so this guy Andy Brown that I know so still good mate of mine he was the key
47:06
Tim at our local GW store and I just come off my summer holiday we were all booked up to go to games day in that
47:14
September um and I was turning 15 shortly after so they're like right this is like your last chance to enter golden
47:21
demon cuz I think it the cut off at that point was like 14 or something they're like right she your last chance you've got to enter Okay cool so I would go
47:27
into the store every day over the summer and sit there and have them go paint harder paint better do it was like I can
47:35
and like liter trying to push myself and like because like a lot of my friends like you know at the time like you know James is like one of the better painters
47:41
we know let's like all kind of chiy up around him and be like let's do it he do
47:47
it and I remember being there and being like and all my mates running around with us at at games day and we were
47:52
running back and forth it was when they used to have it up on the balcony so you'd have to run all way around the stand all around and they like oh my God
47:58
I think yours has got it and then yeah just the mass excitement um but yeah painting it like all through the summer
48:05
and taking advice from other people who I thought were better at painting than me and yeah just entering it and just
48:10
being blown away by the fact that I actually won with it it was the the first time I'd entered golden demon as
48:15
well but it was just first time at 15 near 15 years old and then winning the gold but it did set
48:23
me on a weird mental pedestal of okay I am that good and then I spent 20 years trying to win
48:29
another one like I entered I entered for quite a few years after that all the way up until the point where I went to University so it's like five six years
48:35
more of entering few finalists and I got the old certificates and all still in a book at home um and then I went to
48:42
University had about five six years out then came back to it it's around 2013 I
48:48
think it was really um yeah 2013 came back in with this one and then that was
48:53
the year like Dave SOA came back as well and he won the Slayer sword in the same category and I was devastated like
49:00
because in my head I was like I'm good enough to win a Golden demon and I basically especially when you know
49:06
you've come up with such an amazingly clever concept yeah and I was Concept in
49:12
my head I was like slay a sword 100% that's it I'm done and then you kind of get knocked back down you're like
49:17
actually yeah you know and the at the time girlfriend now wife was like on the
49:22
drive home going look you need to really re-evaluate why you're entering this like are you you entering it just to win
49:28
or you entering it because you enjoy doing it and I kind of like pull myself together from the side actually you know
49:34
what yeah I I'm entering this because I enjoy doing it and that was it that was my mentality going forward as like I'm
49:40
just going to keep entering I'm going to keep doing it because I enjoy doing it and I enjoy the process at every stage
49:47
and whatever I get at the end whether it just be a a pin a pat on the back or a bit of feedback take it and be like
49:53
right let's go forward and keep working on the the question I think I have which
49:59
was funny enough not something I'd ever thought about until at adepticon as we
50:04
were folding the booth down and we were getting ready to go home I met uh and I still don't know the
50:12
gentleman's name off the top of my head but you all probably know him more than I but I met the gentleman behind flame
50:17
on Miniatures yeah who I think he's I think might be Italian I think is might be and
50:24
um this is a long run into question but he had these he said oh he said would
50:29
you like to see some of the things I painted and he showed a load of these amazing Miniatures which I've shown
50:35
newat yeah and these amazing Miniatures that he painted for Golden demon and I was like like Gob smacked by
50:45
and then thought to myself and I'd been to Golden I'd been to the to the awards and I was
50:51
like none of them won anything yeah and I was literally like and I went did you
50:58
enter these and I I knew he did because one of them was a um was an ultramarine
51:03
left tenant with a really glowing Plasma Pistol yeah and I I remember seeing that
51:08
one on the cabinet and I must be honest to my detriment I find a sort of I will look at the age of Sigmar but I'll look
51:15
heavily a 40K yeah and um I remember seeing this and I said how did that not
51:20
had this female chaos warrior with these amazing skulls painted into the shield I went how have you not picked anything up
51:27
and he went oh I never picked anything I never pick anything up he said that my they don't like my painting style it's
51:33
too abstract yeah and I was like really and he was like yeah he said and I and I
51:38
was like God Smack by how amazing he's were but he said I I I never pick up he said it's just the way I paint isn't
51:44
their thing so what that leads me into is do you have to
51:49
consciously do you paint to the best of your ability for what you think looks great or do you have to l to play the
51:57
game I paint for what I like cool and I just enter it and hope it wins but like
52:03
like flamon has got a style that he paints to yeah whereas I'm like try everything try a bit of everything keep
52:10
trying to paint in different ways um and just and comes from that kind of like I
52:17
was entering I was entered this trying to win yeah and then going afterwards
52:22
and realizing that trying to win with that and spending a long time doing it and then literally having my heart my
52:28
soul ripped out and then realized actually no let I enjoy the process of it so let's just paint anything in any
52:36
way I want to paint it that I think suits the model and just enter it and see what happens do you think there is
52:41
do you think there is an of that within golden demon the pain people try to second guess to judging I think so yeah
52:48
yeah it always is because there there people that want to win you know it's like any competition you want to win you're going to there will be people
52:54
that will try and paint to that style yeah as I don't want to say I'm
52:59
completely different from people I just want to paint I just want to paint stuff and into it you know the servo skull was
53:04
painted with sponges you know and in my head I was like it's not going to win anything but I want it to be there so
53:10
people can see it and be like wow that's a and that skull that's weird like you got Amazon like knocking on your door
53:17
yeah Henry Cavell just being like did you say professional Moder of War say
53:23
that like Lally be pulled out of the the TV series that they're doing well we know that he watches this so I'm sure
53:30
he'll it's funny I've had a few people offer me ridiculous sums of money for it and I'm like no it's mine it's my thing
53:36
I'm not selling it literally that is that is my baby like I've spent too many years giving away my cool things that I
53:41
like you know much to my wife's like disgust like all my Army is on Parade boards for example yeah so that's the
53:47
other side of things it's like anything that's kind of a a competition that you can create a spectacle yeah I've Loved
53:53
enter it over the years like do you remember um my dark Elder webway gate yes oh yes that mine so get there's a
54:01
patreon question about that as well so getting into that um and because I enjoyed painting armies I was I want to
54:07
display these I can't really enter them into golden demon then suddenly this competition called armies on prey came up I like that's brilliant model maker I
54:14
can make boards for this this is great so I was just trying to find new ways to enter into that and I've got boxes full
54:20
of them I've just given one of them away actually the giant necron megalith that I did was at the point my wife was like
54:27
look you've taken up like loads of our garage and I'm like yeah do you know what I've got to get rid of I I never
54:33
give get rid of stuff I've got to actually just remove myself from it um so I just end up taking up to element
54:39
games and it's going into the new Birmingham store oh bril yeah so they're going to put it up in there as a display so it's nice that I know it's not going
54:44
to be destroyed yes so it's still there and if I'm like oh I missed that I go up there and just go and hug it for a
54:50
bit this piece yeah but it's nice though it's being seen is it exactly better that than it being in the cboard yeah
54:56
that's the main thing is that I'd love to have a lot of the stuff that I have on display and I generally think with a lot of the things I've got and built I
55:02
could probably fill a museum um which is ridiculous like so many I've got like seven armies on pray boards now all
55:08
stacked up in my shed amazing in crates as well I built bespoke crates for them because I'm a complete nerd well the
55:15
that's so cool the uh the the uh the you know you've got friends who are uh very
55:21
highly regarded within this hobby as well maybe that's your future maybe you need to have your alter evasion of War
55:26
World her Museum yeah I think yeah there's definitely a call for it especially now that um like Warhammer
55:33
and painting toys and stuff is getting so much more notoriety yes yeah it's
55:39
like you can always taste it it's on the BRD it's on the we're standing on the edge of a precipice I think um and like
55:46
we were talking about um KY I mean there the internet's going wild about
55:53
something on Twitter about custodies I don't think we're going to comment on
55:58
um but on I was browsing Reddit this morning and there's a subreddit with 3.3
56:06
million subscribers called out of the loop which is essentially sorry what someone to
56:12
explain this to me what's what's going on and it might be um a war that's
56:18
happening and why is someone doing this or this celebrity and blah blah blah blah blah and on there top of it was
56:26
just like why is everyone going nuts about Space Marines and someone was like oh well it's not actually Space Marines
56:31
it's custodies and and this that and the other and I'm like just the fact that that's there yeah yeah in front of 3.3
56:39
million people uh that someone likes it enough to post about it um is crazy yeah yeah yeah I mean it's like I know like a
56:46
lot of people um like lockdown was the big one pulled a lot of people in so I obviously I'd gotten back into it before
56:52
that and there was a point where I'd had a few years of of like trying to get through to it and then I said from my
56:58
first young Bloods to my second win which was 20 years between the two yeah
57:03
in 2019 I got that and got my golden dim that i' wanted for years and it was the last year they did the old style
57:09
trophies as well so I was like oh god I've got it if I missed that I think I would have been completely devastated
57:15
yeah I got the old sty Trophy and I got one I was it it was happy and at that point I put all my pins and badges
57:20
together on the board and I set it up on my wall and I was like right I know I can do this now and I had this board and
57:27
I was like that's my goal sat next to my paint list it's still there now and I keep adding to it I'm like that's my
57:32
inspiration for myself that I've been through this journey already I'm going to keep pushing and then lockdown happened and I spent two years sat at
57:39
home not really painting because I was looking after my daughter and doing other stuff and trying to make sure the world didn't fall apart and my wife was
57:45
working the NHS and all sorts so we had to deal with all that and yeah going through it but in back of my head I was
57:51
get back to get back to it and then adep con happened in 2020 feel like borderline come like a golden demon
57:57
historian as well AR you like and it's been and know people at home going oh how many times to mention this but my um
58:04
my bestie Tim who's a Welshman but lives here in Nottingham he um he attended the first ever one yeah and he still has in
58:11
the cine is golden demon Shed from the very first golden demon brilant yeah I've still got actually I
58:18
found it in a drawer and it's full of holes and all sorts but I'm going to um I'm going to try and save it I've got a
58:24
t-shirt from 98 no 2008 or something 2008 it was four Space Marines one of
58:31
them has been knocked over and he's he's rolled a one in a save and throw but on the back it's got an embroidered games day golden demon 2008 logo and i' I'm
58:39
like I've got to keep that and I've literally got this shirt that's I couldn't wear it it's got holes all over it but I got the shirt I'm going to
58:45
savor it and like put a video up on my Instagram of me saving the stickers off an old figure case I was like putting
58:51
light fluid on and peeling them off and they're in a frame now stuff like that I get really
58:57
so even though I'm so even though I paint figures in my spare time a lot and
59:02
I work every day on my own company designing stuff for this while I'm working I have my headphones in I've
59:08
just listened through the entire horse heresy series I've just started on the endomet Crusade like I am fullon like
59:16
total hobby geek and I am not not ashamed of it at all brilant I was chatting to an old school friend
59:22
actually and went down to woking again recently um and some old person was like what are
59:28
you still doing here chatting away to them what you doing now oh need toys for a living they like really like a lot of
59:34
PE pews and I was like yeah yeah so totally like you can poo poo at all you want but it's it it's a thing that we
59:41
all love and if you love son enough you I I strongly believe like if you wake up every day and you're like I'm doing the
59:47
thing that I love doing yeah you're never going to worth it in your life yeah know I it's got us to this point
59:52
here where we're sit around having a chat about toys great bril it's just the best thing ever yeah I'm like I love
59:59
cameras and I love toys yeah yeah great it's perfect yeah should we have our
1:00:04
questions uh yeah we have some peton questions well I think what we need to talk about before that is um is your own
1:00:10
company um do yeah is is um I'm I'm aware of all the plants that you make
1:00:18
and uh your new sort of little test painting panels test squares yeah um and
1:00:25
yeah I like I think Pat might be lining one of them up for an EP for a show might you cuz he's Pat has a terrified
1:00:31
of painting your facesat with all the faces on I like yeah again from from going through kind
1:00:38
of learning different things of golden demon you see all these tutorials and stuff online yeah and quite often I watch them and I'm like I'd love to try
1:00:44
that but I don't want to get a random model out of a box that I might use for a golden demon five years down the line
1:00:51
I like that I you know I never I never practice before start painting it because I think I don't want to waste a
1:00:56
in a chure yeah exactly a lot of people have said to me like oh but you know you always get spru of spare bits but as a
1:01:01
demon painter the amount of times I've gone to go and get an arm off a Sprint I'm like oh no I use that on that thing
1:01:09
over there like in my head everything I've got could potentially be used for an entry or conversion or an army or
1:01:15
something so I I I keep everything like every little arm off a SP protection cut
1:01:20
them all off and I put them in a bag and I've got like a box of like dark Elder bits and you pull them out and there's a bag of arm
1:01:26
I mean considering everything we've talked about that's really surprising um but yeah so it came Ken's
1:01:33
point if you few years back I actually had this idea of creating these panels and I actually made one up at the time
1:01:38
of just random leftover bits and cuz I can make it into mold I put it into a mold just cast out these panels and I
1:01:44
use them for trying non metallics or like trying different metallic effects or like all bit of weathering like oh
1:01:50
someone's mentioned oils try some oils because I don't want to ruin a model that I'm potentially going to spend six months painting yeah iest it on this
1:01:57
panel and I just had them tick through and eventually I was like I think this might be a thing people might actually like so then yeah commission
1:02:03
commissioned one from a friend of mine who's a sculptor I worked with for years and made the other one myself Drew Drew
1:02:09
all up in CAD and stuff made them and then just kind of yeah release them and I've been satting them for years and
1:02:14
then they've come down quite well I've got two more coming out at some point um just commissioned my mate to do those
1:02:20
actually so he should hopefully watch this and then get started if you haven't se people home you really need to go and
1:02:26
help one them cuz I I very very kindly you gave me a couple of adepticon and I am okay at faces but when I look I
1:02:33
thought this could be really handy for just the certain things even if it's just for painting eyes cuz people like how do you paint an eye like practice
1:02:40
Yeah practicing practicing and lots of swear yeah is but people would say to me like I love I I'm a real sucker for
1:02:47
doing freehand I love doing freehand I get read noticing some of these pieces some real nerdy little freehand and I I
1:02:53
hide stuff in text on a lot of my miniatures as well like ially go and write something a bit lwd or whatever on
1:02:59
a Model because you can and you like if the judges spot it then you know they're looking if they don't then oh well um
1:03:06
yeah it's people say how do you get that you just practice just keep practicing and keep doing it yeah um but now the
1:03:11
whole the whole business side of things came about I said purely cuz I got back into the Hobby and I suddenly realized I
1:03:17
was malting all these skills I could use to build things yeah and I'd stay lat at work and I'd like sit on the lathe and
1:03:23
machine you know turn something up or go on the mill or start using all the cad skills i' developed and start designing
1:03:29
things and I you know I was using 3D printing about 15 OD years ago when it was like 2,000 of print and these prints
1:03:36
you touched them and they explode like they were just horrible to but then seeing the technology come through and
1:03:42
you realize oh I could use that and benefit from that and you do that and I just started building it up and during
1:03:47
lockdown that's when it kind of got really big um cuz a lot of people sat at home and you know stock levels of other
1:03:53
companies were disappearing yeah oh you do this arm I can use that on my model
1:03:58
um but it kind of already kicked off with the Imperial Knights um I just remember getting again I remember
1:04:03
vividly getting the kit looking at it in the store and being like Oh my God I remember these from epic like when I was
1:04:10
younger yeah and they're so damn cool like I just want to make stuff right and my head was just going you know thousand
1:04:16
miles an hour like I can make this I can make that I can and that was it I'd stay after work and Mill up like new arms for
1:04:22
them and stuff and then I put them online and people like oh you can can you make some for me I'm like actually I
1:04:27
can because it's my own thing I've designed and I can release that and it just it just kept growing it just grew
1:04:33
and grew and grew um and now with the PLS as well and the painting panels and I've got to the point where I can
1:04:39
actually commission old friends of mine who are sculptors who I used to work with in the toy you know toy industry
1:04:45
yeah amazing sculptors who are finding it a bit hard at the moment because of AI coming in and stuff like that and
1:04:50
knocking out jobs and it's quite is quite a Tru Market out there and you know and I'm at a quite a privileged
1:04:57
point where I'm like actually I've built a bit of a name for myself let me hire you and I'll pay you to sculpt figures
1:05:04
for me and I I I love being able to kind of give back to friends that years like you're really good at sculpting please
1:05:10
come and sculpt this and my two busts sculpted by an incredible sculpter called Phil um he's just done a third
1:05:16
one for me which I'm actually was just starting to mold up this morning before I came over um and yeah I just want to
1:05:23
be able to kind of give back to people that I've known and worked with and if I can keep them working help my business
1:05:29
as well then yeah why not keep going do you do you see golden demon is is an
1:05:35
advertisement for yourself at all yeah pretty much yeah um when I was at salute
1:05:41
at the weekend I took a few of my pieces and it's the draw like people come over and they're like oh my God that's that
1:05:46
thing that was adepticon yeah and they all exciting you people see in the skull and it's it is it's to me it's as much
1:05:53
as it's a hobby it is something that I can use from a business perspective to Showcase my skills within the hobby but
1:06:00
also a lot of people have given me feedback on that I'm not just some bloke that wants to make money out of the hobby yeah I'm a guy who genuinely
1:06:08
enjoys doing what I do and I'm involved in the Hobby and I want other people to get that same kind of enjoyment you know
1:06:13
chatting to um my families at the weekend and this there kids come up and they're like how do I get into painting
1:06:19
for Golden demon like you just paint you just enter and then you get feedback and you keep entering but trying to
1:06:26
encourage that next Generation coming through as well and encourage people who are a bit scared about entering
1:06:31
too yeah like I I definitely like it's it's definitely something I'd like to to
1:06:37
do at some stage yeah yeah um just just for fun like going with no expectations
1:06:42
but more enjoy the process of doing it rather than like looking to to get
1:06:48
something so I think that's very unrealistic yeah I mean there was um I can't remember her name but out in out
1:06:53
depths conon I was at stand at the cabinets when they were done all the placing so they had all the notal entries and the pins and you had them
1:07:00
all on the and someone came this girl came running over and she was like oh oh my god I've got a I've got a notable
1:07:05
entry and I was like properly happy for it because I know that feeling of coming to the cabinets and seeing that card or
1:07:13
that pin next to your model yeah and you're like I want to I want to kind of feed off that as well and you know you
1:07:19
kind of encourage him and say yeah that's it and I I remember saying to her like you're on the first run of the ladder now as I it you've entered
1:07:26
you're on the ladder now I like just keep keep going keep pushing you know and I want to see people coming through
1:07:32
like that you know some of these young Bloods that are coming through now are insane arly insane you know there's a
1:07:37
few from war Fest that were just so good and you were like if they entered the main categories they would be placing
1:07:44
quite High yeah you know and it's just encouraging the people to keep coming through because yeah at the end of the
1:07:49
day as you said it's a this is an advertisement for myself I want people to know that I'm yeah I'm a fun guy and
1:07:56
I want to enjoy this as much as everyone else yeah like this is my hobby and my passion so yeah if I can keep that going
1:08:02
but you're you're attitude to it I think is fantastic because I think you don't pedal stall yourself to it the fact that
1:08:08
you are excited for everybody and and want everybody to be able to go on and
1:08:14
Achieve as you as you're achieving I think that's a really lovely way to see it as opposed to just going well I'm a
1:08:19
bit special and this is what I do yeah I mean I'm pretty much almost every day I've got messages I spend like half an
1:08:25
hour an hour laying in bed in the morning answering messages for people people like how do I approach this like
1:08:30
with this pimps and I I'm like constantly happy to give out information you know I'd love to be able to do like
1:08:37
more videos and stuff and show people how to approach doing certain things that I take for granted that I don't
1:08:43
understand that a lot of people don't know but it's because I've got all these years of experience yeah absolutely but it is it's I I just want to encourage
1:08:49
everyone you know if I kept going to Golden demon entry and stuff and didn't win anymore I would genuinely be happy
1:08:54
with that cuz I've I've done my my bit already and I'm enjoying it and I've
1:08:59
achieved what I want to achieve and anything more I achieve is a complete bonus on top of it yeah that's really
1:09:05
cool yeah F love it I just I just love the process love it and just be again just being there you know especially
1:09:11
with like adeps gone you know they've just announced a new venue and we're all a bit like oh no but like the good thing
1:09:17
for us is hanging out at the cabinets at 1:00 in the morning with a beer and going that's really cool and actually been a to see stuff you know we're
1:09:23
hoping we can keep that alive yeah um cuz that would be nice yeah it was a bit it a bit of a shame cuz that was my
1:09:29
first and going oh and if I am lucky enough to to get to go again I think that was be first day and I really quite
1:09:35
like that yeah yeah it's a great fact that everywhere tweet was only 5 minutes away yeah hoping that if you as long as
1:09:41
the venue is open you know late at night and we can all hang around there that'd be great but I get the feeling it might
1:09:46
not be adep cor is like like a 24-hour thing isn't it like yeah pretty much first year I was there um because of the
1:09:54
jet lag and only being there for few hours or a few hours I was literally flew like Friday night and I left on Sunday so it's like 52 hours she didn't
1:10:00
sleep hit Miss didn't sleep I been waking up at 3:00 in the morning I was still probably a little bit Dipsy and
1:10:07
being like you know what I'm going to go look at the cabinets and I went to the cabinets I was on my own like it was
1:10:13
like for me it was like quite a special moment as well being like I've been entering for S many years having
1:10:18
thousands of models to myself at the cabinets at 3:00 in the morning no one you security guard come you're right I'm
1:10:24
just I'm living this this is it and I was it was like a real special moment for me of being at the cabinets on my
1:10:29
own no one else around and just being able to absorb every model you know I was going through counting pints as well
1:10:35
and stuff that oh I think that was on M of mine that's great and just having those those moments like that that's
1:10:41
really special and hopefully that can come through and continue with with adepticon yeah was it's nice that when
1:10:47
you're there as well that you know they closed the main hall down for the night but then people just go and sit upstairs and chat and people are gaming any Flats
1:10:55
for somebody playing something on it it was quite nice and I do and like I say it's sad that I've gone to my first one thought that was great and now they're
1:11:01
going and now we're changing location and go oh hopefully hopefully don't yeah and he say it's getting to hang out like
1:11:07
it's that concern of like if they if you can't hang out the venue then you've got to make sure there's somewhere else
1:11:13
everyone else can go CU I I see painters there that I don't see for the rest of the year you know people again people
1:11:19
that for me like Ben comments like was like you vote me a um a for my wedding
1:11:26
actually my wife wrote to him and when my husband's like my future husband's like a huge fan of yours and him and
1:11:33
Michel at the time who were doing painting Buddha wrote me a card and I remember opening it and sitting at my
1:11:38
wedding being like Oh my God that's Ben Ben and now I go he's a mate now hang
1:11:44
out it's just it's really weird like again like those people who I've idolized for years you get to hang out
1:11:49
with them you get to meet them and really bounce and Inspire off people yeah it's mental like um
1:11:56
I remember watching Byron's videos and being like oh wow that's insane like all
1:12:01
these dry brushes and all that's a mega technique and now we mess message each other about thumbnails and and just be
1:12:07
like is that any good is this any good it's funny to say you know at one point in time this this weird wizard man with
1:12:15
them brick brushes and now I you know work at STS he s there go uh more
1:12:22
necrons of bases walk off you know what I mean and you go you go it's really old CU you know he go you know and and I was
1:12:29
like you know for um you know for for for my ego you know like a person one of
1:12:35
the first people I watched when I got back into the hobby was uh was Vince yeah Vince vuler and he he came up to
1:12:42
the the uh the artst SOA stand and and I really like Vince's approach I I always
1:12:47
say Vince is a bit like being taught to Pink by your your school teacher he's got a very very particular way about how
1:12:54
he how he imparts information it's brilliantly impart as a very particular style and I went up and I said oh hi V
1:13:01
just want to say hello it's I'm Jeff I'm from the and I went say the Payton you went the Payton face I know I watch
1:13:07
yeah he knows you know I know it's weird as I often when people you know in in my
1:13:13
barber shop go oh you know off on your thing again and you go no you know rockar and I go yeah I say but having a
1:13:20
YouTube channel for war game and I said it's like being a rockar in a very very very very small bubble and it's a bubble
1:13:27
that everyone outside couldn't give a monkeys about and I think wead so at adep con I was at the bar one night and
1:13:33
I got chatting to this this random guy at the bar his name was Bill Bill
1:13:38
makes I know him I was like like went found his his YouTube channel like yeah
1:13:43
follow him and then I watched his review of epon I was like oh this Jeff from the P you all know each other anyway because
1:13:50
it's that different side of it youb we've had a really funny thing with Bill because Bill to okay it was a bit of a
1:13:57
funny one cuz somebody messaged bill in one of our comments and went why haven't
1:14:03
you been on the Payton phase for an interview yeah and he responded cuz I haven't been asked and
1:14:09
then I responded to him and went I've got into your since that comment I've
1:14:15
watched your show because you can't watch everything yeah your stuff and new the way you approach things is really
1:14:20
quy I really like it please come on and he went I can't Liv too far away and I
1:14:26
was like you know I was like well why did you know and then and then he comes
1:14:31
up and to me adepticon and he goes he said I'm I'm Bill and I've got to be honest I now had adepticon fever so
1:14:38
everybody look yeah you glaz you gave G and I went he went we talked about
1:14:44
coming on the show Bill M and I went oh yeah yeah yeah and then I had to say to him and said it's ironic I asked you to
1:14:50
come on the show and you said you can't it's too far away and then I meet you in Chicago yeah cuz I saw him again at
1:14:55
salute as well yeah he said he was going mad yeah he's he's a really nice guy he is he has to put if to put a bit of a
1:15:03
full stop to this hopefully he has said he's going to come up for bring out your light and if he does he's going to come
1:15:08
on the show yeah yeah he did mention he was going to come out to not him at some point yeah yeah yeah yeah and he has a
1:15:14
really clever thing because he does this thing on the show of being very D and everything's like a chore and
1:15:20
everything's a bit of a pain in the backside he's a bit fed up with everything that is actually I'm going to break break the bubble on his character
1:15:27
he's not like that told life really really lovely warm chat and we had we we
1:15:32
had a couple of lunch breaks together and he was a really nice fell yeah it's great he's about like um like shows and
1:15:38
stuff like and kind of accumulating people around you like so we came back from adeps con I had like two weeks and
1:15:44
I had to go to salute and it was hard two weeks like I'm I've come back and I'm like ah demons ah work and then
1:15:52
you're like literally plowing through all this work I was working like 15 six nowadays just to get ready for it and
1:15:58
then I I kind of get ready and send to my mates on the way there I'm like next year please tell me not to do this like this is this is hard work like I'm
1:16:05
exhausted and you get there and you forget all of that it's like child birth is you just forget it all you're like
1:16:11
this is the best thing ever three men in a room sorry um but it is it's that whole
1:16:18
thing of forgetting about it and you just you suddenly remember how fantastic it is and you're there at the stand and
1:16:23
all your makes are coming over you're seeing people you haven't seen for ages and they're all running in to see you
1:16:29
and I've Got Friends coming like I Chuck my case behind your stand yeah great and I've got all these figure cases for these amazing painters there and you
1:16:35
suddenly at that moment you go wow like all these people are like friends now yeah I've built a friendship it was I
1:16:43
didn't because I've done adep Toom I was like I'm all right not doing a
1:16:48
convention for a bit and Pat's been poly I've now gone I'm
1:16:54
still a by day so I still have to do this job and I have had a Saturday out
1:17:00
of it by being in Chicago and I really need to come back and earn some money because I've been off work for a bit and
1:17:05
also as well everyone wants you because you've been away so um I was like I'm
1:17:11
all right Miss and salute it's a bit of a pain in the bum to get to as well I'm okay not going and then me Instagram
1:17:18
from that weekend of photographs of all people I now know quite well or or know to speak to at the very least we're all
1:17:23
there I'm going oh I wish gone to some you know real terrible fomo that I had I got back and was just like I've got to
1:17:30
do it again next year I I have to like I can't miss it because Dave Dave Walker from Ms pain 2 is a guy I really like
1:17:36
you know do you know Dave guy with the big dreadlocks yes yes we we've had him on the show he's a really good guy Pete
1:17:42
the war gamer we also really like yeah Byron was there as well Byron and there's just loads of people there um
1:17:48
guys that we've got on with we've got a a a smallish podcast but it's really rapidly growing which are brush Liquors
1:17:54
there a good bunch of guys they were there or at least one of them was there and I was like I was like I'm all right
1:18:00
now going I've just been to the biggest one in the world I'm okay and then I was like Design Studio as well like Darren L
1:18:09
was there and Paul Norton and Tom Hughes and like Louise was there Pat just so
1:18:16
many people like you spend the whole day bumping into people like yeah okay this is go and basically my I sat down a long
1:18:22
chat with my wife and chats my mates on the way back and was like I've just got to be more prepared just got to make
1:18:28
sure before I go to adepticon everything's kind of ready and I don't have to come back and panic
1:18:33
start working about think about salute before you go to the problem I've got as well is that I I came back and I stol on
1:18:39
that buzz from Golden demon and in my head I'm like I want to start doing this and I had like two days or two evenings
1:18:44
where I sat down and started putting stuff in I was like I can't I can't I've got to get ready for this massive show I've got in two weeks and yeah all the
1:18:50
stress of that but I I I've one of these people I like to push myself to do these things and I don't normally regret it I
1:18:56
normally get in and be like yeah this is great I've enjoyed this I've got a few months until Fen now so yeah can chill
1:19:02
out a little bit smashy go for it then Pat yeah we uh put the word out to our patrons if they uh had any questions
1:19:08
that they wanted to ask you um and uh yeah we have a few so this way is from tamson and Mark um uh does your painting
1:19:16
technique change depending on the scale of mini brackets or bust uh and is
1:19:22
painting a standalone epic scale vehicle different to incorporating one into a piece with heroic Scale Models like your
1:19:31
awesome diarama and jeel entry in the most recent golden demon yeah so yeah you do you do have to paint the scale um
1:19:39
I think there a couple of videos I was watching last night actually where people were talking about how like washes for example you can use a wash
1:19:46
but you've got to treat it in a very different way because you do have to think about how that scales down like if you paint a bit of chipping on a plane
1:19:53
how big is that bit of chiping if you scale the plane up is that a chip the size of like you or huge human that's
1:20:00
bumped into this plane so you do have to paint to the scale um and again when you
1:20:05
get when you move all the way up and you get to stuff like skull for example the skull is actually uh I painted that in
1:20:12
my head thinking and approaching it as if it were like a film piece yep so you kind of use techniques where you're
1:20:17
literally using Rags covered in oils and you're just dabbing it on because you could sit there with a double O brush
1:20:24
for a month you'd hate it by the end of it you've got to paint to the scale you know you can scale things up quite
1:20:30
nicely with it but yeah 100% paint to the scale um but also just don't be afraid to try different things in a way
1:20:37
to try and see what actually works at the scale too very good um we have another one
1:20:45
yeah I sort of touched on this earlier is there a specific technique or type of paint that are a nogo for such
1:20:52
competitions EG I heard washes or a noo area no whatever works I mean you can
1:20:57
dry brush us dry brushing bases you know yeah dry brushing all cool yeah literally whatever works uh you can take
1:21:04
any technique and you can um push it and twak it to the next level I mean
1:21:09
effectively you know washes using the wash when you refine it more you're eff to be glazing yeah so it's it's more the
1:21:17
way in which you approach it um I mean everyone talks about different techniques and the way you use them but
1:21:23
at end of the day you're putting paint on model yeah whichever way you put the paint on the model if it works it works
1:21:29
um you just have to work to that you know you can you can use any technique and any oils and whatever works really
1:21:37
goes in yeah um yeah awesome uh what's your starting process do you pick a
1:21:44
miniature first or is a theme your starting point again so I kind of touched on this earlier so it's more
1:21:50
about the idea um used to be like I I wanted to paint
1:21:55
to win so I try and pick something like that's going to win whereas now it's an idea a bit of inspiration yeah as I said
1:22:02
like even driving over here you kind of think oh well that could be fun like you know listen to a bit of law kind of
1:22:08
immerse yourself within the law as well yeah you know you listen to all these great stories and you hear about a fight
1:22:13
scene that's happened between two people and you're like that's cool and you get that Vivid image in your head um I know
1:22:19
not not everyone has the kind of same thought processes and everyone thinks differently but I think having
1:22:25
having just an inspiration behind something making a list of them and then picking the one you really want to do
1:22:32
yeah I think is the best way to do it U 100% like if you don't want to paint a model you're not going to want to paint
1:22:37
the model you sit there and go oh I've got to paint this you're like you're not going to do your best work I think the
1:22:43
thing I found from Golden demon bought in on a question or two apologize but the thing I found from Golden demon a
1:22:49
lot of the time in my head because I can be a bit of a cynic I often think well they're going to pick that new thing
1:22:55
they not long ago released as it and then I think when you realize when you think well Neil holl entered Eldar
1:23:01
exites and there hasn't been an Eldar sit on the back of a lizard as a miniature in a very very very long time
1:23:08
and and and I like the fact that no they don't just go well crout crout are so hot right now or black Templars are they
1:23:15
don't do that and I and and I do respect the judges for that I do think what a lot of people um kind of forget when
1:23:22
they kind of just poo poo it and they say oh no they're just picking the thing that's new or whatever the reason why that's
1:23:29
often com through is that excitement level yeah if something's new and they've released a new figure a new
1:23:34
sculpt and everyone's like oh my God and everyone's painting it online everyone's talking about it yeah you will get more
1:23:39
people painting it inevitably if you got more people painted couple of those it's a numberb a couple of people will
1:23:44
probably paint that really well because they're really excited about that model because it's a model they've been waiting for for years yeah so yeah
1:23:51
sometimes it just well a lot of times it will just line up you see on on YouTube a lot of examples of lately of how to
1:23:58
play paint gold and NMM have been D so you'll get loads of Dantes you
1:24:05
know loads of people enter it like and it's just it's often not there are there are models sometimes you look at and you
1:24:12
think that model's probably never going to win in a demon because it just looks a bit odd like you have to kind of have
1:24:17
like a show face for a model you know the way you look at a model sells the figure and sometimes there are just
1:24:23
models that are they just give themselves to that perfectly you know cuz they've been sculpted by guys in the design Department that have actually won
1:24:31
golden demons before so sometimes I think they do sculpt them with like that kind of intention of this could be a
1:24:36
really good piece in a competition and people will actually onto that you'll see it and you like yeah going to paint
1:24:42
that that's going to work well Smash in um I I I kind of want to pitching I want
1:24:49
to see if you have a favorite of the pieces that you've entered this year or
1:24:55
if there was a standout favorite of like someone else's that you just like oh I love that regardless of if it won
1:25:01
anything or not so out of my own pieces God even though I love the those
1:25:08
GRS I I think I always keep coming back to my grot bike yeah that grot bike was actually 15 years of work oh sounds
1:25:15
crazy but when I first kind of got kind of came out University and kind of got back into it I remember a piece of
1:25:21
artwork by Mike mcy of that Gro on a bike and it's always been the back of my
1:25:26
head since I was a kid going I want to make that and I've tried making it multiple times throughout the years and this was like attempt number six yeah I
1:25:34
kept making it getting to the point where like saiding earlier about like do you ever just can a model I actually did can those models but I didn't even get
1:25:40
to paint them I literally built it and went that looks rubbish chucked in a box came back to it two years later and
1:25:45
tried again just kept trying eventually I found the right gr to go on top of it
1:25:50
um and actually design that and that that for me when I won with that like and one who was there will say I burst
1:25:56
into tears I was so happy because it was such a long time to get to that point yeah um it was just yeah it was just
1:26:03
mind blown absolutely mind blown to get to it um and I got out of pieces this
1:26:08
year from depacon um I mean I did love Andy wles
1:26:14
Elder yeah like they were stunning um like I I actually made a bet on those
1:26:19
and I've lost it but um yeah like are amazing um God I
1:26:27
can't actually remember pieces now yeah there's just so there just so many pieces that you see when you see them in
1:26:33
the flesh it completely changes the way you you view all it I mean almost every demon like you pick the stuff out but
1:26:40
trying to think back now there's one one piece I think that was the very first thing that made me go this is amazing
1:26:46
was the Goram Mora um diarama from 97 I think it was
1:26:53
98 who did it now aan Adrian or someone and it was just all these Goram Mora
1:26:59
Orcs fighting over a thing with Goram Mora logo on that like pieces like that
1:27:04
stay in your mind forever you know like um Chris Clayton's Giants as well stuff
1:27:10
like those those pieces stand out over the years like yob nielson's blood thst versus the slany um keeper Secrets yeah
1:27:19
like that stuff like that you kind of go I remember those like if it if you it for years like this one was Andy wles I
1:27:27
remember his the first one you always hit back and hit it yeah yeah yeah what one if I uh if I jump on the questions
1:27:34
uh for a moment I know there's probably plenty more still in you to come yeah but out
1:27:41
of what you've done what would you like to be remembered for yeah God if you know you talking
1:27:47
about these these people and they're ones that stick in your mind there's a few things I've already
1:27:53
been remembered for and I'm happy that I'm remembered for those like the dark Elder webway gate yeah like that one the
1:27:58
amount of times I bring up I bring it up in conversation with people and I kind of forget I I haven't even photographed it I've never photographed it properly
1:28:05
yeah like it's one of those things to sat in a box I need to photograph it but like the fact that I haven't photographed it but it's that well known
1:28:11
yeah and you people like oh my you made that like oh yeah I forgot that yeah yeah I made that yeah that was like
1:28:17
years ago like that um but like anything like you know the servo skull I like
1:28:23
being remember for different things throughout the time more like you say more like your body of work it's it's
1:28:29
difficult because I've got quite a long career within film TV stage and stuff I
1:28:34
think depends on who the person is that different things yeah um but I mean certainly I think the grots are going to
1:28:41
get remembered for um I feel like I was starting s here with grots and he keep doing more GRS yeah remembered for more
1:28:47
grots so it's just quite cool that's it maybe next Golden de in 40K single miniature just literally one gr yeah you
1:28:54
know down the line you just get referred to or remember you know like man that's saying though like
1:29:01
having different people remember different things so I was chatting to Albert um it's the first time I met him at Golden demon Nottingham in 22 or
1:29:09
whatever it was couple years ago in October we were out drinking went and met him um and was like oh my God Albert
1:29:16
like your pieces are incredible you've just done the dwarf at SMC that's insane and we were talking he was like hold on
1:29:22
you're James taror and I was like yeah it's like you paint that old or F it's I
1:29:27
had that on a poster in my bedroom above my bed as a kid and I remember looking at it and thinking I want to paint and
1:29:34
win because of that and I was like no way like that's insane like a painter
1:29:40
that I'm now aspiring to was inspired by the piece I did when I was 14 yeah like
1:29:45
every different people you like that if you can Inspire different people with different things great brilliant like
1:29:51
that and then comes full circle you know I saw out about the weekend and chatting about the grots now I've done now and
1:29:57
him being like I think yeah it's probably one of the best things you've done now and I'm like dude like I totally inspired by your GRS you did so
1:30:03
it's gone full circle like inspired by what he does you know and he's now saying that that's the best work I've done like keep going keep going keep
1:30:11
pushing it's just just so wholesome and Lovely isn't it like who thought competition painting could just be loads
1:30:17
of guys in room going you're amazing you're amazing I love you oh there's there's a lot of there's a lot of man
1:30:23
love going on I said to you actually like when I hopped over to see the other week and a
1:30:28
quick catch up and um mind I'm normally in like messy clothes every day and I got got dressed up a bit fancy put on my
1:30:34
nice you know nice fresh brand new jeans new shirt and all that and did my hair a bit of a spray my wife was like are you
1:30:41
going to go see another boy yeah she like has he got a beard went yeah yeah cuz I got a type
1:30:48
appar and I said I was like yeah but I just I just want to make sure I look all right and that's it like cuz you know
1:30:55
cuz we mates just want to like want to hang out and like it's nice just to get to hang out with people and like it
1:31:02
really enjoy and experience what we all love doing you know you know I'm 40 this year and I was I want to keep doing this
1:31:08
forever I just want to keep going if I'm if I'm 18 and I'm there like going can do it great you know you've got we've
1:31:14
had some absolutely amazing guests on this show since since it's been over it two years of existence you have got to
1:31:21
be one of the most enthusiastic people for this yeah and I think it it really comes
1:31:26
through um like I can see how everything like looking at the work and everything
1:31:33
that You' done and then chatting to you about you know you don't necessarily have a style you do what you like this that and the other I'm like yeah it
1:31:39
makes sense do it enjoy it's awesome you know I have a laugh of it as well like whole banana thing as well that started
1:31:45
as a complete random joke yeah like it was just like oh I'm going to Chuck a banana for scale on and so again
1:31:50
randomly so the banana the bananas we did a a display for sages and they had
1:31:56
thousands of these foam bananas oh cool and they were chucking them out I was like no no no you're not I took bin bags
1:32:01
full of them I gave I was like what am I going to do and I she had them in my loft for like two or three years my wife was like can you please throw away the
1:32:08
wife your wife Str is an extraordinarily Toler she's amazing she's fantastic um
1:32:13
yeah cuz again because she we were together before I went to University and at the time she's like you you're going to go off and make toys and then why we
1:32:20
split for a bit and it's a whole separate story and then when we got back together she realized I kind of made a career out of it and she's been totally
1:32:27
supportive of like do the thing you love doing and if it makes us money great you
1:32:32
know and that's it you just follow your passion and just do it enjoy yeah cuz I've I've like um certainly like like it
1:32:40
sounds really pretentious like I love telling stories um I think that above
1:32:46
everything else is is like my favorite thing to do like have someone engage
1:32:51
with and feel something with the media that I've created at um I think that's
1:32:56
my like driving force with everything um that I make and there's that saying like
1:33:02
you know do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life and then I remember seeing a picture and it was uh they crossed out a bunch of it and it
1:33:09
was like have struggle with your work life balance and you really struggle to
1:33:14
set boundaries and it's all this that and the other and I'm like oh and and I sort of like fluctuate with it a bit
1:33:20
yeah um but it is awesome yeah I mean I'm very fortunate my you know my kids don't hate me for how much time I've spent doing this years like you know and
1:33:28
they they've almost got no interest in my daughter's quite um artistic anyway but like years of doing it I think they
1:33:34
they see the passion that I have in it as well it's just like I love doing it you know I've got a nice sort Studio at
1:33:39
home painting every night they'll come and chat and be like what are you working on now I'm like I'm painting this tiny head look at it it's great
1:33:47
like and it's like I mean like it's it's like your legacy in a way like
1:33:52
everything that you've collected you know might be theirs one day and they can be and and that's really
1:33:57
special as well I think yeah I mean some of the r I'd love to I've been means to for years I want to go back and go over
1:34:03
my body of work from the last 20 years as a professional model maker and some of when I look back at some of the
1:34:09
photos of stuff I've worked on I forget that I've worked on it yeah but then you're like wow I'd love to I don't want
1:34:14
to make like coffee table books I want some coffee table books to be like here's like my architectural model
1:34:19
making side here's my hobby side here's all the different things I've done cuz when I look at the jobs I've done I've
1:34:24
done thousands of different jobs over the years of like I say jobs of like making different things we made a um
1:34:32
giant insectoid thing for The Witcher series when it first came out went around traveled around the country in a
1:34:37
giant inflatable snow globe stuff like that you're like cool yeah I almost forgot I made that like it
1:34:43
was like three mad weeks of doing it and then few weeks before that I made an oversized coffee machine for Smeg that
1:34:49
went in their window and it was it was like a perfect replica that when we took a photo of it
1:34:55
like I showed it to my wife and she was like I cool You' made a coffee machine and then you zoom out and it's got the real coffee machine next she like oh my
1:35:01
God you made a giant coffee you did a banana for scale exactly that's why you got the banana for scale it works that's
1:35:08
amazing uh couple more questions just to end with um we're getting distracted and talking about awesome stuff um why Scott
1:35:16
coming in with a potentially controversial question uh but not too bad uh why is the painting on an actual
1:35:22
golden demon trophy crap a see I think all it comes down to
1:35:30
is time I a lot of the time they're shipping these things out I mean we have seen them like assembling trophies like
1:35:36
day before yeah I think it's just purely down to it's a time thing really um and
1:35:42
from being a professional mod maker and knowing how to approach things like I get it and be like oh that's not good
1:35:47
enough I could have I in honestly I could have left the trophies as they were they were a bit scratched but it was when I started picking at them and
1:35:53
the it starts falling off you're like and that little bit of you is going you've just got to fix it and I wouldn't
1:35:58
touch like so you can still see there's probably some chips actually still in the gold I wouldn't touch the gold I'd only touch in the black base yeah and a
1:36:06
lot of the time it is it's because they've they've got a resin casting I think they make them all in the house and they're over time the molds get a
1:36:13
bit oily you know it's not the not relas spikes it's the the residual residue from the Silicon itself that comes off
1:36:20
but it's you know they given to these people that aren't necessar um they're obviously hobbyists mod
1:36:27
makers but they're not the people that have made the trophies they're the people that are running the competition yeah so often I think they give them to
1:36:33
them they say we didn't get a chance to paint the bases can you just quickly paint the bases so a lot of times people any old person be like I'll grab some
1:36:39
black spray yeah spray it black where's the intern exactly yeah yeah that's all it is I think it's just um there's
1:36:45
always been even some of the older trophies I've got still got chips in them you know just how the material is
1:36:51
unless you're a professional modmaker 20 years experience you might not know how to approach that yes you know and that's
1:36:57
a whole separate side of the hobby you know we like for resins of people going oh I've took the masking tape off and my
1:37:03
two we paint job came off with it just is how to approach different materials I
1:37:08
I've heard there's a a cohort of of golden demon um or like Slayer sword
1:37:14
winners when they they changed the manufacturer of the sword yeah and they're like now we want the old sword
1:37:19
this new sword's not good enough anyone give me a couple cut out
1:37:24
of one OB be so happy yeah that's fine like a Minecraft s or something like that um here we go so this is it uh I
1:37:32
think James made the amazing dark Elder armies on Parade board at uh woking Games Workshop a few years back uh would
1:37:39
you be willing to talk a bit about how that came about the inspiration the process of building it how the resin
1:37:44
work was done yeah so um and I'll stick a picture when I got back into um I got
1:37:51
back into the hobby I started ing a imp fist Army I did imp fist Army cuz you
1:37:57
hate yourself oh know like it was one of those things of like everyone complains yellow is hard to paint I'm going to
1:38:03
paint yellow when I look back here now I'm like oh I didn't know how to paint yellow back it's fine I time I loved it
1:38:09
and arm on prey came around about the time um it's actually about the time my daughter was born actually in God and
1:38:15
yeah and they brought it into the store I just finished the Army um and it was like okay I enter it and I entered and I
1:38:21
won a ticket to games day that year cuz I'd entered it and I went and I saw all these other BS and instantly I was like
1:38:27
got an idea for the next one I bought the dark Elder box made a another board and it was different to the webway gate
1:38:34
and it was uh the idea was I wanted Elder coming out of a gate so I did this like gate with like a kind of a ridge
1:38:42
coming out of it with all the Army around it on a board and I end up getting Ninth Place I think again cuz I
1:38:48
got a ticket to games day sure 2013 um and I got got n Place overall and was
1:38:54
like cool but in my head I was like I've got better idea so I took that same Army and I created um these individual
1:39:02
sections so I made one section of the actual ring of the webway gate molded It cast It cast them out created a whole
1:39:08
Loop then created a stand for its goal and the idea was like a vanity mirror vanity mirror style thing and then the
1:39:16
actual kind of form deformed uh web coming out of it yeah I got a vacuum
1:39:22
former lot of sticks coming up on a board yeah heated the it up and instead of pulling it completely I kind of Dred
1:39:28
it on and you play with the pressure and you can create webs so something randomly I've been working on a job for
1:39:34
ages ago I was creating webs and while I was working on that job I suddenly went I got an idea I'm going to make this web
1:39:39
Bo gate and that was it is from that and then I created all these webs and it had all these form do you know you saying
1:39:44
this I just have visions that your brain is like ah hours completely like lit you know
1:39:50
you know I said to you like I wake up at like stupid in the morning I literally wake up and my brain is just going Bam Bam Bam you could as soon as I wake up
1:39:57
like you need to do this you can do this why you do that and it is constant all the time yeah and yeah so I made made
1:40:03
those formings and then paint it up and then mounted rods inside it and I entered it and then that year they
1:40:09
stopped doing the overall winners I like oh this is ridiculous so I ended up
1:40:15
that's kind of probably why I didn't take photos of it really but like I put it into the store it went crazy viral
1:40:20
online had lease Ward from warham World get in touch about putting it into the cabinet so we went and put it into
1:40:26
Warhammer world for a bit there in a big display in warham world but then every year after I was like right I've got to
1:40:32
try and match that now so I made the megalith I made another one which destroyed megalith so I made another one
1:40:38
I literally chainsaw it in half I in the workshop built the whole thing and just cut it in half put it on there of my
1:40:43
Imperial nights and I made uh the old school necron like the old necron ones the old style pyramid which I'd I'd made
1:40:50
a pyramid when I was a kids so I was like I wanted to make another one was an adult and I knew what I was doing and I hid a banana inside it you took the
1:40:56
front and it was a banana in it these kind of ideas I just just got to do it just got to do it and again that that
1:41:03
has come about because same as gond because I had been kept entering and I I
1:41:08
missed out on winning a trophy in my head I was like I've got to keep going because I can't if I give up now I might
1:41:15
not get one so i' got to keep enter and even now I've got like three ideas from more boards in my head that I want to
1:41:21
keep doing I want to keep going I said I've done seven armies on Pro boards now and like this year I did my be of chaos
1:41:27
or last year I did my be of chaos and they they missed out and now they've released new categories and you're like ah if the new categories out last year
1:41:34
ibly could have entered it into those and I might have actually won it so I just got keep going keep entering yeah
1:41:39
yeah it it literally all came about because I just been wanting to get that win I wanted that cool trophy yeah still
1:41:45
haven't got one I've got loads of medals Haven quite trophy but that's it it just it just keeps driving on for that yeah I
1:41:51
mean it's amazing and then and I'm thinking like oh if I put in loads of practice and try and get really really good at painting and then it's like like
1:41:58
nah like no no bloody chance thing is it's it's it's about keeping entering I
1:42:04
always say to people just enter just enter these things because you don't know like I've I've had a lot of near
1:42:10
misses over the years where I've been sure I was going to get something and I haven't so you don't know yeah so you
1:42:16
just have to keep sometimes you might get lucky in a category that is a bit weaker that year it shouldn't take away
1:42:23
from anything it's still an achievement to get into that category and wi something with it um you you just got to
1:42:30
get on that Ro you know as I said seven seven times armies I'm prayed now and I haven't got the trophy I'm going to keep
1:42:35
entering because I want to keep doing it you know I'm not going to let that knock me back you know I was I find it quite
1:42:41
sad when not sad but like dishearten them when you hear people like get really like upset about not winning a
1:42:48
demon because I've been there I've been at that point when I've been gutted and I didn't win anything with this one but
1:42:53
you have to realize like at the end of the day we're painting toys yeah like just just keep painting toys keep doing
1:42:59
the thing we love like you know I know there are people out whose careers rely upon it but yeah just keep going keep
1:43:05
being passionate about it yeah yeah awesome then we have one final question which I think is probably the most
1:43:10
painting face question of them all um which means it's a bit silly uh and Tim
1:43:16
asks why is there never a cake on any on any golden demon winner don't the judges
1:43:22
like cake [Laughter] well no one's painted the um who was it
1:43:28
it was the was it the white dwarf anniversary miniature that they released that had cake on it there's a white
1:43:34
dwarf in power armor that had cake on the base someone needs to paint that there you go yeah there we go he needs
1:43:39
to paint it I'm sure I'm sure there have been like there must have been entries like where people have entered squ with
1:43:46
cakes in fact there's saying I'll posst this to everyone that potentially watches this I remember quite vividly
1:43:52
and I kind of trust my memory cuz I do remember these things sometimes I do trick myself into thinking I remember
1:43:58
these things but don't I'm sure when I used to go to Golden demon years ago back in the late '90s there was someone
1:44:05
every year who entered a skull on a cocktail stick on a base and that the
1:44:10
reason for that is they entered it because back then you used to get into games day half an hour early yeah if you
1:44:16
entered into golden demon so every year they get to the front queue with their head or skull on a cocktail stick on a
1:44:22
base and enter it they run down to the retail and buy their Falon grab tank which is like the most popular
1:44:28
figure at every games day apparently was the fal grab tank but I'm sure but there's I haven't been able to meet
1:44:33
anyone that confirm that can confirm that but I'm pretty certain that was a thing wouldn't it be great if he
1:44:39
watched love CU I remember see I'm sure I remember seeing it we used to go and try and find it in the cabinets You'
1:44:45
hunt through like 40K single where is it there it is Skull want to with it half an hour early yeah
1:44:53
I think one of the my favorite entries to a golden demon is the to stealth suit
1:44:59
but when it's invisible yeah just B yeah and that really
1:45:05
makes but you can't I don't think you can really enter that sort of stuff anymore put the base in but I went this
1:45:13
year's adepticon where somebody entered a single uh epic Marine yeah yeah that did really well they got commanded yeah
1:45:20
yeah oh amazing commanded but again they ped all the they did all the the highlights on the the shoulder and
1:45:25
everything I wonder what would be like a fun what would be like a a meme entry into golden demons oh don't know the um
1:45:33
the uh the the dubious Rhino that that burn them all didn't say was allowed to
1:45:38
make the cut uh from this year's adep the con which one was that the large
1:45:43
stretched uh Rhino oh yeah yeah this I know um I think Dave Taylor did the
1:45:50
Thunderbirds Imperial nights which got in the cabinet and then promtly got taken out of the cabinet yeah like if
1:45:56
there's like IP no that's an IP issue you can't have that if there's any IP issues then they they get sort of taken away don't they so the thing me going
1:46:03
back to something we said before about like memorable entries I used to love the when the open category allowed
1:46:08
artifacts so do you remember they' had the wizard staff with the Dome there some made a wizard staff in a felt a
1:46:15
velvet line box oh I too remember scroll and then they had the glass Dome on the top with like a wizard or something in
1:46:21
it and I remember and that was one of the things that like really I really wanted to do and before um just before they they removed
1:46:28
that as a category I started making um a life-size prop of the sword from a chaos
1:46:34
Warrior on a gamesday poster that chaos warrior with the orange glowing fire back giant demon sword behind you on the
1:46:42
wall that one that one yeah I started making that sword as a life-size prop oh W in my spare time having no idea what I
1:46:48
was doing I was carving out of MDF and all sorts and breaking bits and putting super glue on it my mate Andy at the
1:46:53
time was like oh if we get this bit and you carve it out of this I'll mold it and make two so you can have the two skulls on it and I I got through and
1:47:00
that that actually got me into university cuz I went along with bits of it and was like look I've been making this sword I don't know what I'm doing
1:47:06
it weighs a ton made out of solid ndf I I want to learn like I want to
1:47:11
learn how to do this and then that year they were like artifacts aren't allowed and it basically got thrown in the bin I
1:47:16
was like Chuck that but that's still in the back of my head of like I'd love to go back and actually make that as a life
1:47:23
siiz prop cuz yeah that I've got the full siiz poster of that and I love that image I love that image yeah but again
1:47:29
like stuff like that taking inspiration from artwork you know multiple pieces of mine have been taken straight out of
1:47:34
artwork yeah that's the best reference you can I'm I'm terrible for like having ideas and and then not doing them
1:47:41
because I think like with YouTube and everything you just sort of like oh this idea and this idea and that blah blah blah um I saw recently an image of a a
1:47:50
blood angel that was like partway Turned turning into Alpha Legion like and all
1:47:55
the images and stuff and I'm like how awesome would it be to have like a kill team or an army where if you line them
1:48:02
all up one guy just has a finger that's Turing and then you go all the way through and then the guy at the end just
1:48:09
has like a a red little finger or something like that and just having that cool sort of narrative oh that' be so
1:48:14
cool see I'm going to say it because I know I never do it and I know some will probably do it because I hear this yeah
1:48:20
I've wanted to do an Imperial Guard Army for years and I'd never do it because I'm not a gamer but have an Imperial
1:48:26
Guard arm me where at the very beginning there's like a couple of guys with genene C the cult heads yeah and as I go through the tournament swap them out and
1:48:33
then by the time you get to the end of the tournament they're like hold on p Guard on me like yeah they're definitely
1:48:38
imp guard 100% like and just swap the whole Army out and sudden there's extra arms
1:48:44
appearing different guys weird mutations yeah that's an idea that's been B around
1:48:49
my head like I've got guard armies and I've got je to the cult Army like doing it that's like a lot of
1:48:55
magnets isn't it lot yeah or blue tank yeah and just having like a hidden box that you can swap stuff out yeah yeah
1:49:02
yeah you spend more time making like the Strategic head swapping device so as you
1:49:08
extend your arm loads of like just puts the head in your finger is that Daren
1:49:13
eam over there yeah Cher oh
1:49:19
incredible yeah I I think we' we go then a few little things uh first of all the
1:49:25
most important one is thank you very much for coming thank you I properly enjoyed myself good um so subscribe if
1:49:33
you are don't already like because why wouldn't you this guy's lovely and share
1:49:38
and get more people to come and see all of this lovely stuff that James has painted and a big thank you to our
1:49:45
patreons and if you're not a patreon you need to sort it out because James is
1:49:50
going to tell us a little bit about some of his uh paint and tips and uh you'll be privy to them if you uh click on
1:49:57
there and get involved amazing yeah that'd be cool wouldn't it for you so thank you so much
1:50:04
for going on I've had a very wholesome time oh great always happy to talk toys
1:50:10
loveys awesome

Behind the Scenes at Golden Demon! JAMES TARO!

fauxhammer.com

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Behind the Scenes at Golden Demon! JAMES TARO!

fauxhammer.com